On our way to Fort Morgan, Alabama.
We’re having a springtime vacation near Gulf Shores, Alabama this week. Today was travel day. We left home–two vehicles and nine of us!–at 4:15am in order to catch our first flight from Madison to Charlotte.
We had a short layover in Charlotte and then caught our connecting flight to Pensacola. Caelynn slept through the entire flight which made her very proud! We arrived at noon. It took a couple hours to get our rental cars and crawl to Gulf Shores through a hundred red stoplights and a thousand white knuckled drivers all lazing around at ten under the speed limit, but eventually we made it.
I got to drive Truckzilla, a white Ram 2500 that happened to be the cheapest vehicle available to rent (because how much rental demand is there for three quarter ton pickup trucks at an airport?) It’s almost as fun to drive as it is to park. It’s a great luggage carrier, though!
We ate lunch at the Pink Pony Pub in Gulf Shores. The food was good but not great. We didn’t need great. The tray of chicken nachos was enormous.
Afterward the girls spent some time in the beach sand. Emmy and Kinsley made sand angels. Caelynn found a straw.
When we got to our house the rest of the family spent some time in and around pool. I went to my room and took a nap because I am old and I had been awake since 4:00am.
Kinsley wants to be sure everybody knows the pool is a saltwater pool. She mentioned it many times over several hours. Now you know and you will never forget.
Later on we spent a couple hours walking along the beach and wading and jumping in the waves. We picked sea shell fragments. Emmy wrote her name in the sand and I managed to get a picture of it seconds before a wave washed it away.
Then we ate dinner. Just a couple frozen pizzas we threw in the oven. Nobody wanted to cook, it had been a long day.
Later on I caught Emmy all by herself looking out across the gulf from the upstairs balcony. I had to take a picture because it was not something I’d ever seen before…
She sat still in the breeze for a minute or so. She wasn’t doing anything else. Not dressing a Barbie, not writing her name on a scrap of paper, not eating a cookie. Nothing. What is going through her mind in a moment like this? If I asked her she wouldn’t, probably couldn’t, answer. It’d only put her on the spot and ruin whatever she is experiencing. It’s none of my business, really, but it’s difficult not to wonder.
Hopefully many memorable things happen in the next few days so she can sit still in the breeze and think about them years and years from now.